You meet the one, you fall in love, everything goes to plan and poof happily ever, right? This was how my love story was supposed to unfold. At this point in time, I guess you are picking up on the fact that nothing goes according to plan, nothing goes the way we “think” it will go. This love story did not have a happy ending; it instead took me somewhere else, to a place I could never have imagined. This story took me on a quest to love myself and begin a movement.

Move with Love began in a dark time of my life, when there was a lot of wine, a lot of tears, a lot of heartbreak, and a lot of loss. I sat at a desk, staring out a window in my 500 square foot East Village apartment, with a small set of woodblock stamps. The Velvet Underground played on repeat into the late hours of the night, where I sat at that said desk and that said window, feeling longing, loneliness, and loss. One gloomy night, deep down within me, a quiet voice emerged. It said, “Move with Love.” I ignored it. It said it again. I dismissed it. It got louder. The more I refused the message, the louder and more persistent it came, until I couldn’t ignore it anymore. Reluctantly, I surrendered to its call to action, this call to move with love. How to go about it — I had no idea. For some reason, I grabbed a piece of college ruled loose leaf paper and those tiny stamps from the dollar bins at Michaels art supply store and began. I stamped one letter at a time. M-O-V-E W-I-T-H L-O-V-E. I stamped each letter of each word until the phrase filled the page. With my fingers blackened from the ink, I sat back and felt the pain in my heart lessen its grip. I decided to do it again. M-O-V-E W-I-T-H L-O-V-E. And then again. M-O-V-E W-I-T-H L-O-V-E. This phrase became my white-winged dove. It saved me. It pulled me out of the dark and became my mantra, my outlook on life, the person I wanted to be for myself and the world at large. I wanted to live and move (only) with love. Move with Love whisked me away to far off places with new faces — India, Germany, and France — testing all the while my faith in love. One day, it plopped me back home in New York City, this time in a sunlit apartment in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. In BK, this phrase continued to lead me forward. Move with Love adorned t-shirts, totes, cards, walls – anything I could get my hands on — including the skin of my left arm. Move with Love became a website, a workshop, a community and a practice of movement, breath, growth, and healing. It became something bigger than me. The mantra, Move with Love, calls to me daily, reminding me to move with love again, and again, and again. I invite you to do the same and that we do it together. We move with love.